Lovelier, Lonelier: A Novel

By Daryl Qilin Yam

"Casts a beguiling spell." -Rachel Heng, author of The Great Reclamation

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gaudy Boy, LLC
• Release date: Feb 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9781958652053

Daryl Qilin Yam

Daryl Qilin Yam (b. 1991) is a writer, editor and arts organiser from Singapore. He is the author of the novella Shantih Shantih Shantih (2021), shortlisted for the 2022 Singapore Literature Prize, and the novel Lovelier, Lonelier (2021), which was longlisted for the 2023 International Dublin Literary Award. He co-founded the literary charity Sing Lit Station. His writing has appeared in periodicals and publications such as the Berlin Quarterly, Mekong Review, Sewanee Review, The Straits Times and The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singapore Short Stories anthology series. His first novel, Kappa Quartet (2016), was selected by The Business Times as one of the best novels of the year, and described by QLRS as "[breaking] new ground in Singaporean writing... a shimmering and poignant novel, an immensely sympathetic and humane exploration of our existential condition."

Book preview

1.png

"A tender, precise book filled with strangeness and beauty, Lovelier, Lonelier casts a beguiling spell. The novel asks the big questions: what does it mean to love? How much of our lives are written in the stars? How can one be free? These are questions that can only be answered in its ambitious scope. Yam builds entire worlds spanning decades and continents that echo, overlap, intersect, linked by a delicate thread of serendipity, and it is a pleasure to inhabit them."

—Rachel Heng, author of The Great Reclamation

Melancholic, peripatetic, flexuous.

—Amanda Lee Koe, author of Delayed Rays of a Star

Yam’s prose is fresh and contemplative—one that I’m excited to read again in the future.

—Lee Jing-Jing, author of How We Disappeared

A sensitive, assured piece of work with a strong sense of feeling at its centre.

—Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti

A beautiful and hallucinatory mediation on life, love (or what passes for it) and the elusive nature of reality. The intertwined lives of four friends intersect with historical events and inexplicable, fantastical incidents in a genre-bending novel reminiscent of Haruki Murakami.

—Victor Fernando R. Ocampo, author of The Infinite Library and Other Stories

In this novel lies the journey across museums and galleries in Kyoto, New York, Madrid and Singapore that you have been dying to crash. If you love meandering paths and performance art, this massive existential road trip will leave you drenched in heartbreak. Enter and lose yourself.

—Heman Chong, artist

First United States edition published 2024 by Gaudy Boy

Original title: Lovelier, Lonelier

© 2021 by Daryl Qilin Yam.

First published by Epigram Books, 2021.

Published by arrangement with Agence littéraire Astier-Pécher.

All Rights Reserved.

Published by Gaudy Boy, LLC,

an imprint of Singapore Unbound

www.singaporeunbound.org/gaudyboy

New York

For more information on ordering books, contact [e-mail].

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for brief excerpts for the purpose of criticism and review.

ISBN 978-1-958652-04-6 / eISBN 978-1-958652-05-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023943311

Cover design by Flora Chan

Interior design by Jennifer Houle

Lovelier,

Lonelier

Daryl Qilin Yam

PART I

RANDEN

Kyoto, 1996

Happiness lies beyond the clouds; Happiness lies above the sky.

—Kyu Sakamoto, Sukiyaki

1

It wasn’t love, really. They were just trying to make something out of their lives.

When Jing met Isaac, in 1996, she was in the midst of losing her mother, a loss that, looking back now, she might have supplanted with a man she’d come to love, or what she had assumed was love. She would find herself thinking about this years later, at one of Isaac’s work parties, one of the few she had attended out of an unspoken solidarity. They were at the clubhouse of a condominium, located at one of the offshoots of Orchard Road; the host was a theatre-maker who wanted Isaac to star in one of her plays, regardless of whether his renewed contract with Mediacorp would allow it. Jing remembered the look on Isaac’s face then, a very well-known face at that point in time, but a face she liked to think she knew most intimately as he stared out of a window: she saw the way he gazed past the treetops, and the way his features were lit, dappled even, by the shimmering surface of the pool several metres below. She saw the way his eyes were trained towards the hazy skyline of the boulevard’s glittering buildings, not so much with yearning or despair, but with some other emotion she had yet to pin down, even after all the time they’d spent together.

The year was 1999; the new century would be upon them in a few minutes’ time. Standing in a corner of the room, watching various couples find one another, reach for one another, all of it in an atmosphere of palpable anticipation, Jing was struck by the idea that there were perhaps some things she would never know about him, had never known about him, probably since the day they’d first met. With this came the conclusion that it wasn’t solidarity that Isaac needed from Jing that night: it was solitude. He wanted to be alone, or perhaps, he needed to be alone; it might even be a fundamental part of his nature, this loneliness. She became increasingly convinced of this, even as a countdown eventually began, causing her husband to finally tear his gaze away from the window.

She’d seen that same look before as well: on Mateo, her best friend, in that restaurant in Shinmachi-dori.

It was the night of the 22nd of March, 1996. They showed up to the restaurant at 7pm sharp, standing underneath an umbrella large enough to accommodate them all: her, Mateo and their other friend, Tori, who worked and lived at the ryokan they were staying at just two streets away. Jing and Mateo had met Tori in their final year in London, in the spring term of 1994, at a house party in Stoke Newington: even though Jing had exchanged a few kisses with Tori that night, it was never serious, because the real intimacy, Jing knew, lay strictly between Tori and Mateo instead. To her they shared an innate connection, an understanding that bordered on the telepathic, resulting in an intense, triangular friendship over the remainder of that term, one that undoubtedly made Jing jealous of the other two at times. Jing watched Tori then, in that restaurant in Shinmachi-dori, wondering if she could see what must have been plain to her too: that Mateo was in trouble, had been in trouble over the past few days in Kyoto, and that he might possibly be at the breaking point that evening. He had already taken to staring out the window just minutes after the three of them had been seated, in a place that should have appealed to all of Mateo’s sensibilities: the dining area replete with hinoki floorboards and furnishings, with servers dressed in linen from head to toe, and that overly large juniper bonsai standing in the middle of the dining area, casting grotesque shadows on the ceiling. Instead Mateo partook in the drizzly weather outside, the droplets still clinging to the wires between the telephone poles, the only landmark of note in an otherwise featureless part of town. Jing wondered if Tori knew what was going on with their friend, as she caught her giving Mateo a quick glance. She wondered if any of them knew what was really going on with each other’s lives.

Tori began to scan the menu. Jing made the effort to do so too, even though everything was in Japanese. Tori then told her it was okay, that she would do the ordering, although her finger did hover over the few options they had, the cheapest one priced at 3,500 yen.

Jing made a face. Ugh, she said. That’s going to hurt.

I agree, said Tori. She flipped the menu, trying to see if there was another page—there wasn’t. Oh no, said Tori, smiling at Jing, and Jing couldn’t help it: she smiled back at her too. Tori asked if Jing was still returning to Singapore on Sunday, the twenty-fourth, and Jing said yes, I suppose so, though with a little hesitancy. Tori asked her what the matter was, and Jing didn’t reply immediately: instead she quickly shot Mateo another look, before saying that there were still things she needed to settle. Things she needed to do.

In Kyoto? said Tori. Kyoto, specifically?

Jing nodded. She allowed herself to look at Mateo more firmly then, just as Tori stared at her with her question. But Mateo’s gaze was still fixed towards the window: it made him appear more impenetrable than ever, what with the watery light from the streetlamp shining into the restaurant, casting a grey, nearly opaque finish over his face, his glasses, the collar of his shirt. Tori then asked them both, her and Mateo, what it was that Jing needed to do in the city, and Jing felt like she had no choice but to say that she was sorry, and that now was not the right time.

To what? asked Tori.

To tell you, said Jing.

Jing and Tori kept quiet then, for a few seconds. I see, said Tori. I understand. She smiled again. We have not spoken in the past two years, so I should not . . . I should not pry, she said, causing Jing to feel an onset of shame.

Don’t misunderstand; it’s got nothing to do with that, said Jing. It’s just—there’s a story I can’t tell, not now. I’m still in the middle of it. You get that, don’t you? she asked, and at this Tori nodded, saying yes, I do. I do, actually. Do not worry. Tori then turned to Mateo, and asked if he knew what was going on with Jing.

I’ve been helping her, actually.

Oh. Over the past three days?

He nodded.

And are you also leaving on Sunday?

Mateo looked down at the table, and shrugged. I don’t know, he said, making a pointless flip of the menu before him. He still hadn’t made a decision on his open return; he didn’t know when he would be flying back to Spain. To Madrid? asked Tori, and Mateo shrugged again. Maybe, he said, most likely Madrid, after which hung a long pause, a pause that Jing used to watch him again, her friend from long ago, wondering why there was so much the three of them had chosen to hide from one another. She wondered how they had got so comfortable with this, this arrangement of not knowing. But in her mind she knew that different friends had different agreements with one another.

Hey Mateo, said Tori.

Hmm?

Is it sad?

Mateo cocked his head to the side, with a half-grin on his face: for just a few seconds, Jing thought, he looked like his usual self again, like she’d always remembered him. What is? he asked, to which Tori said, Jing’s story, causing Jing to laugh, mortified at what they were saying. So is it not? asked Tori, smiling once again, and Jing shook her head, saying no, no, I don’t know. Forget it. She laughed a little more before she took a sip of water. It’s fine, she said. I’ll tell you one day, Tori, the whole thing. The whole story.

Mateo’s face lit up just then. He reached a hand out, tenderly, to touch the window.

Oh, he said: Fireworks.

Jing remembered turning, almost immediately, with the eagerness of a child—but there was nothing, nothing, even though that was the moment when everything had begun to change. Where? she asked Mateo, and he quickly tapped his fingers on the windowpane, before the light could fade away.

Right there, he said—there, look. You see it, no?

Tori stood up behind Jing, and took a step towards the window. Jing remembered feeling Tori’s hand on her shoulder, a light grip that left her tense.

I don’t see anything, she said.

What?

Tori appeared to remain unconvinced. I don’t see anything, Mateo, she said again. Some might—some might say it is too early.

He didn’t understand. Too early?

For fireworks, she said. Tori then explained it to him, to the two of them: how hanabi, as they were known here, typically take place during the summertime. It is the custom, she insisted. Tori then asked if he was sure about what he’d just seen, and he said that he was, he was certain about it. And that was when Mateo revealed that he had been seeing fireworks every night, actually: grand ones, large ones, fired over the city. Over the main river, in fact, the Kamo River, that threaded through the city centre. He would hear the fireworks first before he’d see them, many of them, burst all over the sky above.

Every night? asked Tori.

Mateo nodded. Every night, he said. And that was when Jing finally made eye contact with Mateo that evening, as he added: I can show you.

The friends didn’t stay long at the restaurant after that. They settled the bill, and proceeded to walk back to the ryokan, under a much lighter rain this time. There is a bar, said Mateo, a bar that he could take the girls to, to show them that what he’d seen was real. Jing remembered failing to understand why the fireworks had mattered to him so much, but she also remembered the way that Tori looked at Mateo too, with a sudden seriousness that surprised her. This is important to you? said Tori, and Mateo said yes, it was important, very much so. Then okay, said Tori, I will go with you. And when she turned to Jing to ask if she would join them too, Jing found Tori holding her hand, with the same firmness she’d felt on her shoulder just moments ago. Come on, said Mateo, join us. Just like old times. Jing then looked at him, and then at Tori, with the distinct feeling that they were caught in an undertow, somehow, the three of them too weak to resist it. Sure, she said to Mateo. Let’s go out.

The three entered the ryokan and took their shoes off; they were about to settle on a time to regroup when Tori appeared distracted by a pair of trainers, shelved away in a corner of the genkan. She began to head down the corridor of the first floor, towards the common kitchen, in a manner that compelled Jing and Mateo to follow.

There was a guy inside, a tall one, with hair that’d grown past his eyes. He turned out to be a recent friend of Tori’s, a guest at the ryokan a few weeks ago, before he went travelling around the region. He called her every other day, from whichever payphone he could find, just to tell her where he was; Tori hadn’t known, however, that he would be coming back to Kyoto that evening. I also didn’t know, the guy said, smiling. Tori asked if that was why he called her a second time today, and he said yeah, I guess. In fact, he just got to the ryokan half an hour ago, just in time before the front desk closed for the night.

Tori glanced at the tinfoil packet, heating up inside a pot of boiling water. Instant curry? she asked.

To go with rice, he said. Plus a banana, the guy added, pointing at the plastic bag beside the rice cooker.

He then finally turned to her, to Jing and Mateo, asking if they’d eaten already. Jing remembered being struck by Isaac’s handsomeness then, an almost unfair attractiveness that pushed past the unkempt hair, the uneven shave, the hollowness in his cheeks. It was also hard to tell if he was older or younger than she was: he had a natural complexion that betrayed his youth, but also a demeanour, an air about him, that told her he’d been through something difficult, profound—something only he could understand. In years to come, this aura of his would compel strangers to be kind to him, unfailingly so, and even propel him to stardom; that same aura would protect him too, from the lingering presence of most people, as though afraid of overstaying their welcome. It left only a rare few in his innermost circle, a circle Jing couldn’t even be sure she was a part of at times. But she wouldn’t have an inkling of this, wouldn’t have the ability to foresee such a thing in the ryokan that evening, not on that Friday night in March, 1996; as they shared their names with one another, she wouldn’t be able to tell if her attraction to him was due to some gravitational effect that he had, or because she wanted to be pulled towards him instead, to be close to someone, to have the presence of something decent in her life. When Isaac revealed that he was from Singapore, Jing remembered feeling heartened by the coincidence. It felt uncanny to her. Oh, she said, me too, which left an awkward, almost embarrassing silence in its wake.

Mateo spoke up. He asked Isaac if he would like to join them later, to a bar he knew in the city. Isaac said it was okay: he wanted to rest tonight, take his time at the bathhouse after his dinner. He felt like he had come a long way, even though the journey hadn’t actually been that far.

Where were you? asked Mateo. Jing then watched Isaac turn back to Tori, tentatively, just as he gave his reply: Nishinomiya.

A frown and a smile both quivered over Mateo’s face. Isn’t—isn’t that where—?

Tori nodded. Yes, she said. Where I grew up. And for a moment the four of them fell quiet once again, filled with questions they didn’t know how to ask one another. They were all so young.

2

On the day he left home, Isaac made sure to take a couple of things with him, on top of the other items Sherry had written down on a list. First, he took a lighter and a pack of candles from his field pack, as well as his tin can, for eating on the go. He then went into his parents’ bedroom and pocketed his father’s Oakley sunglasses, hanging from a hook behind the door, and took the Walkman too, standing by his father’s side of the bed, which also doubled as a radio.

He popped out the cassette tape. It was an old favourite of his father’s, Bad Girl, the 1985 album by Anita Mui. As Isaac put the tape down, wound halfway along its A-side, he recalled not the music, but the cover art, the singer in bright jewels and a purple dress, staring through the hollow of a man’s fading silhouette.

Isaac went over to the other side of the room. He swiped a half-empty jar of sour plum candy from the top of his mother’s bedside cabinet, a leftover treat from Chinese New Year. He then found more sweets, which he took as well, as he worked his way down the cabinet’s drawers. From the fourth and final drawer, Isaac managed to find a disposable camera, with eleven shots left in the roll, as well as his birth certificate, laminated and slotted into a fraying, A4-sized manila envelope. ISAAC XAVIER NEO JIALIANG, it said. 01/03/1973. Isaac placed the certificate back into its envelope and filched that too.

He returned to his bedroom, his and his sister’s. The only thing that Isaac took from her was a photograph, stuck on the wall above her mattress. As he peeled it away from the Blu-Tack, he could sense his sister stirring, looking up at him, drool already pooling over the side of her mouth.

Isaac knelt beside her. He used her bib to wipe her saliva. He then got her to look at the photograph, for what would be the last time between the two of them.

The year in the corner said 1982: Isaac was nine, his sister seven, his parents still in their early thirties. They were at the zoo, all four members of the family, seated on a giant, artificial log. There was a monkey too, squatting in the middle—golden-haired and red-faced, unbothered by the way his sister had wrapped her arms around its body. As Isaac held the photo closer to their faces, Isaac could see the monkey’s trainer standing by the side, smiling proudly, it seemed, at both the way the primate was behaving, and the unbridled enthusiasm his sister had for the creature.

Isaac considered the other faces too. It was easy for him now, to see how they might have borne traces of a future they would each come to inhabit. His father looked content for one, but wary, clearly anxious about the animal; you could see the sweat coming down his sideburns, dripping down the length of his forearms. His mother, eyes half-open, sported a lazy smirk as she placed her hands around her daughter’s shoulder, oblivious to her husband’s worries. And there was him, of course, his mouth wide open in a perfect smile, holding up a peace sign next to his face: the only one ready for his shot.

Isaac and Sherry got the idea to run away on the 17th of January, 1995, about a year before they managed to carry out their plan. It was a day off in National Service for Isaac, a Tuesday: Sherry met him at Khatib Camp, first thing in the morning, and followed him back to Chinatown, to his flat in Jalan Minyak, where his family lived on the twelfth floor. They had arrived with food, a steaming packet of chwee kueh and two cans of F&N Grape, and heard a thump, from his and his sister’s bedroom; when they opened the door they were immediately assaulted by a horrible stench, followed by the sight of Isaac’s sister on the floor, squirming and struggling towards him like a worm. Just beside the mattress was his mother, who kept on sleeping, snoring like a cow, even with the smell of her daughter’s shit wafting from a day-old diaper.

Zach, said Sherry, you wanna wake your mother first? Isaac quickly spotted the bottle of zolpidem pills in a corner, and shook his head.

Help me carry my sister, he said instead.

They hoisted her to the back of the flat, their feet nimble enough to avoid the flecks of waste that dripped onto the floor. Sherry then brought the radio from the living room, her father’s Walkman, with a Faye Wong cassette tape inside it this time, and placed it next to the door of the toilet.

Isaac laid out a few sheets of newspaper on the floor before he undid his sister’s diapers. He and Sherry grimaced, and held their breath, as he skipped over to the rubbish chute and tossed it out of sight. Sherry waited till Isaac had settled back down and started the water before she extended the Walkman’s antenna, adjusted the dial for the radio, and turned up the volume.

93.3FM was Sherry’s favourite station. Isaac had always known, ever since the two had started dating in their second year of poly, that it had been her dream to go into radio one day, even though he had also seen how that dream would shrink, or take a different shape from time to time, to accommodate other roles in the media that she could do. Now her aspirations went largely unspoken, a year after they had graduated; Sherry still worked at her mother’s printing shop, failing to put anything they had learnt in their media and communications course to use. Whenever Sherry played the radio next to him, Isaac could only think of the way their lives were already adjusting even further, and hardening, some might say, within the fast-shrinking confines of a foreclosed reality.

There was a news segment then, on the radio: the first item was about a major earthquake that had struck Japan several hours ago, at 5.46 in the morning. The tremors had lasted for twenty seconds, and measured at a magnitude of 7.2 on the Richter scale. Isaac and Sherry exchanged a quick look, certain that the same question had arisen in both their minds: what in the world did a 7.2 entail? What was a 7.2 relative to a 5.2, a 6.2, an 8.2? The answer soon came: an estimated 3,000 lives lost in the city of Kobe alone, a number the newscaster said was sure to rise over the rest of the day. And as the news segment concluded, the two looked at one another, dazed as though in an aftershock of their own, broken then by the most horrific sound, a sound Isaac found hard to believe he was hearing: it was laughter. The radio deejays of the morning show were laughing, over a joke one of the co-hosts just made. It didn’t matter what the joke was even about.

That’s horrible, said Isaac.

Yah, said Sherry.

He found it hard to speak. I can’t believe—

Believe what?

Isaac shook his head, to stop himself from commenting further. And yet he felt surprised when he heard Sherry’s voice, as though she were completing his sentence: We are so lucky to be here. Right?

His first instinct, believe it or not, was to laugh in response. Right, he thought. They were so very lucky to be where they were. And while the two of them smiled at one another, Isaac knew that Sherry was imagining the same thing he was: of Singapore shaking, uncontrollably, 7.2 on the Richter scale, just to see what it felt like, for once—just to see what it meant to crumble, for once. It was not a frightening thought for him to entertain. And even though Isaac was playing with the bidet now, causing his sister to clap and snigger under the fresh spurts of water, he could still feel Sherry’s gaze upon him, along with all of the anger and shame and self-loathing that they shouldered between them. Remnants of his sister’s shit floated towards the drain of the toilet as he said:

Do you want to leave?

The dazed look came back into Sherry’s eyes. Oh yah?

Yah, said Isaac. Let’s leave.

They saved money over the following year. The weekend before his National Service ended, Isaac and Sherry got together and counted everything they had in the bank. They counted and then recounted, and then counted again. At the end of it all they asked one another, did they really know how much it would cost to take a bus, a train, a ferry, a flight? What about hostels, other places to stay? What about food? Isaac and Sherry frowned, unsure of what to say.

Isaac still remembered that day, spent at the void deck, tallying up coins and bank notes, and sums on their passbooks over a mosaic-tiled chess table. The void deck was in one of the estates in Bishan, where Sherry and her mother lived in her maternal uncle’s flat; she had just come back from the hospice, where her father was warded, paralysed after an accident in the army. Isaac saw that Sherry had worn lipstick that day, and a bit of blush. She had eyeliner on too, and her eyebrows were plucked into thinner lines.

Make-up, he said to her.

Yah, she said, keeping her eyes down on her passbook. Nice, right?

He nodded. It’s new, he said. It’s nice.

She smiled.

Thanks, Zach, said Sherry.

That was a thing Isaac never figured out: how she had arrived at this nickname of his, the shortening of his name to Zach. It was what she called him ever since they became a couple. To her, he would always be Zach, while to him, Sherry would always be Sherry.

The following Saturday, Sherry asked Isaac if he wanted to try something new. It was a small request from a friend, with some money tied to the end of it. It’s nothing complicated, she said, and it could be done in one morning. Nice, said Isaac, that’s super cool, even though he had no idea, really, what it was she was getting him to do. Isaac then asked if he knew this friend of hers, and Sherry said no, don’t think so. He’s someone new, she added. Sherry then told Isaac to meet her at her mother’s printing shop at 10am on Monday, and he told her he’d see her then.

Isaac liked going to the printing shop. Sherry’s mother was a tall woman with even taller hair, and she had a great, great laugh. She was the kind of woman who’d get invited to host auctions or sing karaoke on stage every time getai season rolled by. He’d see Sherry’s eyes, her nose and her teeth every time he looked at the woman, and it amazed him, the resemblance. And whenever he visited he’d bring food from the kopitiam next door, and Mrs Wong would laugh and say aiyoh, leng zai, so sweet. She’d take the food with her glove-covered hands and pass it around the shop, causing the heavy musk of hot paper and fresh ink to be imbued with the scent of whatever food he got them that day. But as he stood outside the printing shop on Monday morning, he found himself horrified by the realisation that he would not miss this. He would not miss these smells, these recollections. It shocked him to think that he would not even miss the sounds of Sherry’s mother greeting him, laughing at him, calling him handsome. What was the point? he thought. It made him wonder what he was truly capable of achieving; it made him wonder how far he’d go to excavate himself, if it meant that he could run away. He would miss nothing, he thought, as Sherry opened the door.

Hey Zach, she said.

He stepped inside. The shop was closed on Mondays, so there was no one in besides the two of them. Sherry locked the entrance and led him to a photocopier, the one standing at the rightmost corner of the place. Isaac pointed at the tall stack of A5 paper beside it.

Flyers?

Dui, said Sherry, nodding. She must have already started before he showed up, thought Isaac. Sherry picked up a separate stack of A4s and passed it to him.

Cut them in half, she said. Can?

He nodded. He then looked at the A4s and the A5s—at the same face that was smiling on all of them.

Is this Zoe Tay?

Sherry cast him a quick glance. Dui, she said again.

He peered closer. There was text in English and in Chinese, printed at the bottom of the flyer: ZOE TAY. MOST POPULAR FEMALE ARTISTE. STAR AWARDS 1996. He must have looked rather puzzled, for when he raised his head again he saw Sherry staring at him.

You dunno, right, she said.

Yah, he said. No clue.

Sherry handed him one of the flyers. She told him that the Star Awards was a TCS awards ceremony that started two years ago. It rewarded the best in Chinese Singaporean television, super glam and everything. So you dunno about The Golden Pillow? Sherry asked, and Isaac said in response: What pillow? It was a drama starring Zoe Tay, and it had just ended the previous month, said Sherry. In the first episode, set in Thailand, Zoe Tay’s character, Xiao Dan, gets caught in a love triangle between two men: there’s the one who wants to marry her, a you qian got money kind of guy, and there’s the one she wants to marry, her childhood friend, who she’d been in love with for the longest time. But the you qian ren then gave 1,500 baht to Xiao Dan, signalling his intent to marry her, while Xiao Dan moves along with her life, carrying around the 1,500 baht, with no idea that the money could mean this kind of nonsense thing. Only at the end of the episode does her childhood friend finally tell her: Someone wants to marry you. You sure you dunno, Xiao Dan?

Wait, wait, said Isaac. But she wants to marry her childhood friend, right?

That’s right, said Sherry. Ren Niang.

And is Ren Niang also a you qian ren?

She shook her head. Xiao Dan’s life would be simpler, said Sherry, if she could just forget about Ren Niang. Just marry the you qian ren. But what to do?

Isaac looked at her then, unable to tell what was going through her mind. Yah, he said. What to do.

Sherry didn’t respond. Instead she turned back to the flyers, to all of Zoe Tay’s photocopied faces.

That’s how I know.

Know what?

That I really love Xiao Dan, said Sherry. That I was going to love the show. Xiao Dan is so strong, so brave, all because she’s in love with Ren Niang, who’s also strong and brave as well, said Sherry. No matter where he goes, there she will be, because she loves him no matter what.

Isaac looked at the flyers again. It was the first time he ever heard Sherry say she loved anything in her life; it was also the first time he felt like he was learning something new about Sherry again, even though it made sense, of course, that she would fall into this kind of thing. Okay, he said. I get it.

At 12.45pm they were done cutting all the flyers. Isaac went out and bought them both lunch, fishball noodles from the kopitiam. At 1.30pm a man came by the shop, a skinny dude with running visors; Sherry handed him the entire stack of flyers, all 1,500 pieces of Zoe Tay. The man opened his backpack and handed Sherry an envelope filled with $2, $5 and $10 notes.

Sherry returned to Isaac’s side. Together they counted the money, both of them performing mental sums under their breaths. When Sherry was done counting she said: Okay. Take it.

He felt like he had to ask. Everything?

She nodded. Yah, she said. You keep.

And then the day to leave came, on the final week of February. Isaac placed the lighter, the candles and the Oakley sunglasses into the tin can, before putting it at the bottom of his backpack. He then gathered all his mother’s sweets into a ziplock bag and placed it inside as well, followed by the camera and his father’s Walkman. In also went the manila envelope, containing both his birth certificate and the photograph of his family at the zoo. All of it sat alongside his essentials, the things that Sherry had listed for him, which included an extra set of clothes, some toiletries and stationery for making notes with. His passport, his way out of town, was kept in a separate ziplock bag, while his wallet was fastened to the waist of his jeans with a metal chain. He was good to go.

He heard a moan, then, from the corner of the room. He wondered if it was cruel of him, packing his bag in front of his sister. Isaac looked at her one last time, and found her staring back at him, her hand opening and closing, as though grasping at some invisible thing.

I’ll always remember you, was all he managed to say, before he left for good.

The sun was quickly setting. Isaac made his way down the hill, towards Chin Swee Road, before cutting across the park at Pearl’s Hill towards Chinatown. Even then he thought that he might have lost all memory of his neighbourhood already, overcome by the realisation that all roads had a way of looking the same, all paths too, all under the common denominator that was the night. When he got on the bus that would take him directly to Golden Mile, Isaac placed himself on one of the seats beside the windows. As soon as the bus reached its next stop, he thought he was on the verge of retching, of heaving, only to realise that he was crying, sobbing, so painfully that he had to bite into his fist to muffle the anguish. When he could finally reopen his eyes, he found that the seats closest to him were clear of people; only the few who had remained along the perimeter managed a glance at him, before fearfully looking away.

Sherry was already at Golden Mile, waiting for him on the steps of the main driveway. She had a fanny pack around her waist, while her backpack, a bright purple Eastpak, sat beside her feet.

Hey, Sherry, he said.

She must have noticed how puffy his face was. Hey, Zach, she said anyway.

Isaac rubbed his nose, and looked around. There were other people too, people with suitcases and rucksacks, staring at the road. You ready? he said.

Sherry nodded. You leh?

He nodded back. I think so, he said to her. He then felt another sharp pain, squarely in the middle of his ribs this time. And then he had to bend over, his chest tightening.

Zach. Zach.

Yah?

You can do this, Zach.

Okay.

You are going to take this bus and leave everything behind, Zach.

Okay.

It will take you to a new life, Zach.

I know.

Do you?

Yah.

You sure?

Hmm.

Okay, good.

Their bus came at the appointed time, at 7.50pm. Sherry reached into her fanny pack and took out their tickets. Isaac trailed behind her as they queued for their seats. It took everything in him to be grateful that here, even now, he still had Sherry Wong, the one who understood him the most. The one who knew what it meant to have this rage of his, an incandescent rage, one that would clear a path forward for his and Sherry’s new lives. The driver asked if they had any luggage, and it was clear to Isaac, so clear: these bags on their backs, it was all that they had with them. These bags were the sum total of their new lives, with spaces they might or might not fill. He would do anything in his power to protect what he had left with him.

Sherry chose a pair of seats in the midsection of the bus. As Isaac settled in beside her, she held tightly onto his hand, placing it firmly on her knee.

Hey, Zach?

Hmm?

Say it to me.

Say what? he said. And then he stopped himself, shook his head; he knew what she was talking about.

You can do this, Sherry.

Hmm.

You are going to take this bus and leave everything behind, Sherry.

Hmm.

This bus is going to take you to a new life, Sherry.

And Sherry looked at Isaac, her eyes boring into his. What could Isaac say about this moment, seated in this bus to Malaysia? That her eyes were hardening and then softening, and then hardening again; that they wouldn’t loosen their grip on the other’s hand; that he wouldn’t know how long they would stay that way in the bus, after the doors closed and led them north, out of Singapore and over the Causeway, away from everything he had known before. They went into the strange and the wondrous, towards the only things he knew for sure now, which so happened to encompass the passing view, the blurring signs—the too-wide and half-dreaded unknown.

3

Fear, Mateo thought. Love is everywhere.

He thought Daniel had called, on his fourth night in Tokyo. It was a leap day, the 29th of February, 1996: Mateo stood by the sink of his toilet, in the serviced apartment that the gallery had rented for him, smoking a cigarette whose taste he was beginning to enjoy. He turned to the box, flipped it on the counter, reread the label on the front: Golden Bat Cigarettes. Sweet & Mild.

He left the door to the toilet ajar, by just a sliver. It was enough for him to watch his companion for the evening, a man whose name he had long forgotten or probably misheard. They had met in Ni-chome, at one of those hole-in-the-walls that were friendly, welcoming even, to the patronage of foreigners: a guapo approached him and danced with him, the Cher song they were shimmying to nearly over at that point. Mateo could still recall the sensation of the guapo’s mouth at his ear, asking if they ought to sleep with one another, and Mateo had said yes, yes. Let’s leave, right away.

Mateo tapped his ashes into the sink. Here, in the ambient lighting of his room on the eighth floor, he inhaled the last of his cigarette and exhaled over the scene, over the sight of his companion, compressed within the gap between the door and its frame.

Anyone could look like anybody, given enough smoke.

He stubbed out his Golden Bat, flicked it into the toilet bowl. He then reached for a second, a third, a fourth; he knew that life would continue to be like this, this endless reaching for things, so why should he stop now? It also explained why, at 1.15 in the morning, he found himself dashing out of the toilet in his bathrobe, towards the phone that just began to ring. He picked it up and went, Hola—Daniel? only to cringe, and swear under his breath, when he heard a woman’s voice instead. It was Jing, a former roommate from his time in London, asking who this Daniel was.

Ha ha, he said. My bad. Hey, Miss Singapore.

Hey, your foot. Come on, Jing said to him. Who’s Daniel?

Mateo eyed the man on his bed, deep into REM. The corner of his mouth twitched, as well as his brows, before he turned his body to the side. An ex, said Mateo, his heart palpitating. Huh, said Jing. You never told me. Do you want to talk about it? she asked, and he had